All The President's Men: Great Story Line, Great Acting, Disappointing Ending

In class a couple of weeks ago we watched the movie All The President's Men starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman about the Watergate scandal which tainted Nixon's presidency and caused him to resign. Although the story behind this movie is a great one about the investigation of the scandal by two Washington Post journalists, Woodward and Bernstein, the movie doesn't live up to my expectations. The beginning of the movie was extremely informative about what actually occurred in the Watergate building in Washington DC and what happened to the robbers after they were caught, but it moved rather slowly. The middle of the movie picked up the pace alittle and became much more interesting as the journalists really began to investigate the scandal and uncover the truth about what happened on that day. Since the middle had picked up, I expected the end to be amazing, bringing down the President and hearing the Nixon tapes, however it was just a wire from some press service being shown as if it was being typed on the screen. I was hoping there would be some action; however, I guess I have just been programmed by action movies with big, exciting endings and that is not what All The President's Men ended with.

Back when this movie was made, everyone who was watching it knew how the story ended and had experienced the excitement surrounding the downfall of the presidency, so the movie at that point did not need a big ending. However, this movie has not been able to withstand the test of time. Most people who are 20 or younger do not know anything about Watergate except for a very broad summary of what had happened, so this movie is great at informing its audience about the actual crime and about the investigation into the scandal. The movie also does a great job at showing the audience how a newspaper is run and what journalists must go through in order to get a story published. If I had to grade this movie, I would give it a C, even though it had great acting, it was missing the action that audiences in the 21st century crave.